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How Conversation Works: 6 Lessons for Better Communication

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Frequently Asked Questions

With an eGift, you can instantly send a Great Course to a friend or loved one via email. It's simple:
1. Find the course you would like to eGift.
2. Under "Choose a Format", click on Video Download or Audio Download.
3. Click 'Send e-Gift'
4. Fill out the details on the next page. You will need to the email address of your friend or family member.
5. Proceed with the checkout process as usual.

Q: Why do I need to specify the email of the recipient?

A:
We will send that person an email to notify them of your gift. If they are already a customer, they will be able to add the gift to their My Digital Library and mobile apps. If they are not yet a customer, we will help them set up a new account so they can enjoy their course in their My Digital Library or via our free mobile apps.

Q: How will my friend or family member know they have a gift?

A:
They will receive an email from The Great Courses notifying them of your eGift. The email will direct them to TheGreatCourses.com. If they are already a customer, they will be able to add the gift to their My Digital Library and mobile apps. If they are not yet a customer, we will help them set up a new account so they can enjoy their course in their My Digital Library or via our free mobile apps.

Q: What if my friend or family member does not receive the email?

A:
If the email notification is missing, first check your Spam folder. Depending on your email provider, it may have mistakenly been flagged as spam. If it is not found, please email customer service at (customerservice@thegreatcourses.com) or call 1-800-832-2412 for assistance.

Q: How will I know they have received my eGift?

A:
When the recipient clicks on their email and redeems their eGift, you will automatically receive an email notification.

Q: What if I do not receive the notification that the eGift has been redeemed?

A:
If the email notification is missing, first check your Spam folder. Depending on your email provider, it may have mistakenly been flagged as spam. If it is not found, please email customer service at (customerservice@thegreatcourses.com) or call customer service at 1-800-832-2412 for assistance.

Q: I don't want to send downloads. How do I gift DVDs or CDs?

A:
eGifting only covers digital products. To purchase a DVD or CD version of a course and mail it to a friend, please call customer service at 1-800-832-2412 for assistance.

Q: Oops! The recipient already owns the course I gifted. What now?

A:
Great minds think alike! We can exchange the eGifted course for another course of equal value. Please call customer service at 1-800-832-2412 for assistance.

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Q: Can I select a date in the future to send my eGift?

A:
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Q: What if the email associated with eGift is not for my regular Great Course account?

A:
Please please email customer service at (customerservice@thegreatcourses.com) or call our customer service team at 1-800-832-2412 for assistance. They have the ability to update the email address so you can put in your correct account.

Q: When purchasing a gift for someone, why do I have to create an account?

A:
This is done for two reasons. One is so you can track the purchase of the order in your ‘order history’ section as well as being able to let our customer service team track your purchase and the person who received it if the need arises.

Q: Can I return or Exchange a gift after I purchase it?

A:
Because the gift is sent immediately, it cannot be returned or exchanged by the person giving the gift. The recipient can exchange the gift for another course of equal or lesser value, or pay the difference on a more expensive item

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Course Overview

How do you make conversation with someone you have just met? When is communicating by email ill-advised? How do you say “no” without using that dreaded word? Regardless of age or occupation, conversation can be tricky. And like it or not, it’s one of the most important things you do on a daily basis. Successful conversations help you advance professionally and make, maintain, and deepen relationships. Moreover, research shows that talking, when done on a substantive level, is correlated with a feeling of happiness and general well-being.

Being a great conversationalist requires practice and effort. The good news is it’s a skill set anyone can acquire and refine. In just six lectures, How Conversation Works: 6 Lessons for Better Communication will teach you key strategies that can dramatically improve your ability to converse with anyone, from strangers to supervisors. Delivered by award-winning English professor Anne Curzan of the University of Michigan, this highly practical course focuses on the fundamental principles you need to know to become more conversationally aware and savvy at home, in the workplace, and beyond.

You’ll be amazed by how much you can learn by stepping back from conversations and examining how they operate. You’ll notice things you never picked up on before—like what kind of speaker you are, the strategies you typically rely on (often without realizing it), and the subtleties of the strategies others may use when speaking with you. You’ll find yourself putting these lessons into practice to create more effective dialogues from the very first lecture.

Choose Your Words Wisely

An expression like “shooting the breeze” makes conversation sound easy and free-flowing, but even low-stakes conversations have an underlying systematic structure that propels them along. This course examines that framework while showing you how the effective selection of words can help you forge connections and accomplish your objectives.

Professor Curzan walks you through techniques for negotiating a variety of difficult situations, from proffering successful apologies to engaging in “face-threatening acts”—those uncomfortable moments that have the potential to do damage if your words aren’t chosen carefully.

You’ll learn graceful ways of

pointing out a mistake;

asking someone to do something he or she doesn’t want to do;

preparing a person for “no”;

asking for a big favor; and

providing information the recipient doesn’t want to hear.

Conversations can only deepen connections when you pull your weight. In How Conversation Works, you’ll learn this involves knowing how to skillfully open and close an exchange, take turns speaking or “negotiate the conversational floor,” and send people subtle signals.

Perhaps most important is sharing the burden to make discussions feel more mutual and enjoyable. These lectures arm you with numerous conversation-facilitating devices such as

introducing new topics for discussion and picking up on the topics of others; and

telling good stories and helping good stories along.

Talk Your Way to Success

Whether you want to build rapport with colleagues, promote your accomplishments in an interview, give a winning presentation, ingratiate yourself with your boss, or even create a connection on a first date, knowing what to say and how to say it allows for more productive, smoother interactions. How Conversation Works helps you get ahead by outlining simple techniques for accomplishing all of this and more.

Short vignettes featuring professional actors demonstrate what to do—and what not to do—in a variety of everyday scenarios such as striking up a conversation at a party. In video formats, green-screen technology places the professor in a range of environments as she provides concrete advice for taking an uncomfortable conversation in a new direction, making polite requests, mastering the “humble brag,” limiting your “talk time,” and monitoring your use of distracting discourse markers such as “um” and “you know.”

In addition to sharing these out-the-door tips and techniques, Professor Curzan dispels common myths about conversation and presents enlightening research on

how the conversational styles of men and women share much in common, despite differences in socialization;

how you may be perceived for using direct speech or sentence fillers;

how language-style matching quickly creates a sense of compatibility;

how parents serve as conversational role models; and

how e-communication has surprisingly systematic conventions.

A Guide for the Real World

As a professor of English and linguistics and member of the American Dialect Society, Professor Curzan offers a refreshing yet scholarly take on the subject of conversation. Using a developmental and skills-based approach that gets right to the heart of the matter, her course provides tangible, actionable methods that can be worked into your conversational repertoire immediately.

At first, the newfound awareness you’ll acquire from How Conversation Works may cause you to become self-conscious when you speak, but the act of “conversational noticing” will soon become second nature. Before long, you’ll realize you have the tools to make yourself clearly understood, put others at ease, rescue a conversation that’s gone wrong—and keep conversations from going off course in the first place.

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6 lectures

| Average 31 minutes each

1

How to Become Conversationally Aware

Discover why the simple act of talking is so important to your success professionally and personally as the professor introduces you to the idea of becoming conversationally aware. Learn and analyze techniques for doing your share of conversational work and consider how gender affects the way we converse. x

2

How the Conversational Floor Works

Improve your ability to navigate the conversational floor by exploring turn-taking devices as well as techniques for opening conversations and monitoring or reducing your “talk time.” Weigh the pros and cons of using discourse markers and fillers such as “well,” “um,” and “like,” and understand why being an active listener and back-channeling are crucial to being a good conversationalist. x

3

How and When to Be Direct and Indirect

Interpreting the meaning behind the words that people say is key to making conversations work well. Consider the logic of conversation and understand more consciously the way we use explicit and implicit meanings—direct and indirect speech—to accomplish things through conversation. Also learn ways to redirect conversations that feel inappropriate or questions you find overly personal. x

4

How to Navigate Face-Threatening Acts

Situations that threaten another’s “face” or dignity are particularly complicated. Explore methods for managing this difficult social territory, including guidance on enhancing positive face, respecting personal space, offering a successful apology, and navigating the politics of giving a compliment. Consider how cultural differences of politeness affect expectations in this area. x

5

How to Negotiate Professional Relationships

Turn to hierarchical relationships and self-promotion in the workplace with an investigation of the language of sophisticated ingratiation. Get strategies for making presentations feel more like conversations, ensuring listeners are engaged, and interviewing effectively—on both sides of the desk. Then, delve into the dynamics of doctor-patient communication, where effective conversation can lead to better care. x

6

How to Maintain Relationships with Talk

Compare “report talk” with “rapport talk” to understand how discourse can simply relay information or build intimacy with a friend or romantic partner. Look at the fascinating research on how cooperative and competitive speaking styles differ, how parents model conversation for children from infancy, how language alignment can predict relationship success, and how electronic communications follow prescribed patterns. x

Lecture Titles

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What's Included

What Does Each Format Include?

Instant Video Includes:

Download 6 video lectures to your computer or mobile app

FREE video streaming of the course from our website and mobile apps

DVD Includes:

6 lectures on 1 DVD

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Your professor

About Your Professor

Anne Curzan, Ph.D.

University of Michigan

Dr. Anne Curzan is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English at the University of Michigan. She earned a B.A. in Linguistics from Yale University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. Professor Curzan has won several awards for teaching, including the University of Michigan's Henry Russel Award, the Faculty Recognition Award, and the John Dewey Award. Her research interests...

Reviews

How Conversation Works: 6 Lessons for Better Communication is rated
3.6 out of
5 by
82.

Rated 5 out of
5 by
ChiGirl from
Great Information, Easy to ApplyThis is truly a great course. I purchased this after taking a new job at a company where the ways of communicating were very different that what I had been used to. These lectures helped me better understand/refresh basic skills while providing the framework for applying what I learned and looking at communication in new ways.

Date published: 2019-07-20

Rated 5 out of
5 by
Richard105 from
Amazing CourseI bought this course several months ago and have utilized many of the suggestions found in the course with much success. Conversation has become much more enjoyable and informative.

Date published: 2019-06-28

Rated 3 out of
5 by
EngineerinVA from
GeekyThis course is like a scholarly analysis of what make a joke funny or a scholarly analysis of how to swim. It is interesting in and of itself but it is impossible to use it to make yourself better at it.
This is a short (six lectures) scholarly analysis of what makes more effective conversation. Important topics include back-channeling, saving face, and different conversation styles of men and women.
The assumption is that understanding these elements can make the speaker (and listener) more effective. However, at most it can make the speaker more self-conscious. The problem is that consciously employing these lessons slows and disrupts the conversation. On the other hand, it may help a person become a better listener.
Dr. Curzan communicates in a professional style. It is not personal, particularly engaging, or warm-and-fuzzy.
I used the audio version. I believe the video version would not have provided any benefit.

Date published: 2018-12-14

Rated 4 out of
5 by
The Wizard from
Good StuffI'm 80 and I've been studying this kind of stuff all my life, I believe I could have given this course except for the last section on using social networking. So I got something out of it and anything I learn that is new is good.

Date published: 2018-07-27

Rated 4 out of
5 by
JDR1 from
Good, but a bit over-directedGood content, but over-produced staging becomes tiresome and distracting.

Date published: 2018-07-20

Rated 1 out of
5 by
mnop from
Common SenseGot through the first two lectures. Some how it just sounds like fancy academic words being put to common sense. This lecture would be better titled "conversation tips for the immature teenager".

Date published: 2018-04-18

Rated 5 out of
5 by
Playwright from
AS A RETIRED PROFESSOR, AND VERY GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST tHIS CONFIRMED BY THOUGHTS AND CONVERSATION METHODS, AND HELPED MR QUITE A BIT.

Date published: 2018-02-05

Rated 2 out of
5 by
fred21 from
Talking with handsGeneral content OK, but constant gesticulation is distracting and irritating. Could professor have conversation with hands tied?